Consumers Tweet What?!

Very interesting blog post by Forrester’s Josh Bernoff today on Summize and TweetScan. Both tools allow you to search Twitter for certain key words and find tweets that correlate. My first thought as a PR person? What a great way to track what people are saying about my product!

As young PR pros, it is important for us to keep tabs on emerging consumer voices via social media to listen to what they are saying about the products and companies we represent. The tools mentioned in Josh’s blog post allow us to do so; to easily find what people are saying on Twitter.

Josh also has some interesting recommendations on how we can take action and respond to consumers via Twitter, in a very “non-creepy” sort of way (I hope). This is what he has to say:

If your product is just getting started or has a tight niche audience, then it's valuable to respond to many of your customers, with an @yourtwitterhandle type reply. This can have a "voice from the sky" quality so open the conversation carefully, e.g. "Saw your tweet, hope you are enjoying our product, tweet back if you have questions." For customers having problems that you can solve, this may be a great way to turn a detractor into a fan (if you can solve the problem, of course).

Just another way social media enables us to establish and maintain a positive relationship with our consumer base.

(BTW, I still hold firm on my prior claim that we shouldn't tweet pitches at reporters) :)

Be Careful What You Tweet

Read this post on BusinessWeek by Stephan Baker a few weeks ago and found it interesting to hear a journalist’s perspective on a PR person’s intent to pitch via Twitter. Here’s the pitch:

Saw your Twitter post this morning about The Last Time. Love that song. I’m also a big fan of Dead Flowers.
Anyway, thought this story about businesses integrating voice into their every day apps might work for your blog. For me, what particularly stands out about voice integration is that it helps drive usage and makes of applications more effective, especially those that are hard for employees to adopt (i.e. CRM modules)…

The journalist’s reaction? Well, he “liked” the pitch enough to blog about it, so I’m guessing his reaction wasn’t so great.

Lesson learned? Twitter is a unique emerging microtrend, however I don’t think we are quite ready to use it as an avenue for pitching. Believe it or not, journalists are people too – and they have an uncannning ability to smell fake, even through e-mail. What struck me about this pitch was not that the pitching PR pro used a twitter post as means to establish a connection between the reporters’ interests and his/her product; it was his/her lack of sincerity.

When cultivating relationships with reporters, it is important for PR professionals to be sincere. In other words, focus on the relationship, not “what can this reporter do for me now.” The real benefit will be seen in the long term.

So where does Twitter fit in? At this point, Twitter should be used only to build and grow relationships with reporters and NOT as a pitching tool. Through Twitter, I can find that Charlene Li created an audio version of her book. Or that Scobleizer likes toolbars, especially this one. Or that Nate Elliot likes the new Live Search features. Or that Rafe Needleman is canceling his eFax account. (Oh wait, update: he is sticking with it for another few months until his subscription runs out).

Maybe once you have that relationship established, hey go for it. Pitch via twitter. But until then it would be wise to leave twitter to the tweeters.

Simplicity is complex

Who knew Twitter is an art, science and social network all in one? Alex Iskold offers advice to readers on how you can "kill a Friday night" on Twitter in his post 5 Ways To Have Fun with Twitter When You're Bored.

Another interesting post on the ups and downs of microblogging. I found a particular interest in the story of how a professor, Parry, noticed that Twitter brought his classroom closer together.

On a different note but along the same lines, Forrester's Josh Bernoff (social media guru and coauthor of the upcoming book "Groundswell") posted an interesting blog entry detailing how blogging can have a different objective based on different audiences you are trying to reach, using his 5 blogs as a case study throughout. Although I don't have time to write a complete analysis, I thought this quote was interesting (but please read the full post for context):

"To begin with, know that I define myself as a writer, a communicator, and an analyst -- not a blogger. Calling someone a blogger in a few years will be like calling them an emailer now -- it will be just another form of communication. So even with these five blogs, it's not because I'm some sort of tech-addicted whiz-kid -- far from it. It's because writing is what I do, and I use them to accomplish different goals."

From 'me' to 'we'

In his blog post this morning on Forrester's Marketing blog, analyst Jeremiah Owyang made an interesting observation about the evolving role of social media in our society and how it is "moving from 'me' to 'we'".

At SXSW, an annual music and media conference in Austin, Jeremiah noticed that, while Twitter emerged as a useful communication tool last year, this year it served as "one of the most prominent and power shifting tools of the festival." He says:

Twitter, a communication tool to track sessions, parties, and events. Perhaps in a pure social manner, Twitter became the glue of the dozens of friends that were spread out over the city at parties, to find out where friends are and people you want to meet, people were actively tweeting where they were. In many cases (myself included) it was a way to let people know where the happenings were, and to constantly keep a pulse on what the masses were up to. More than one person expressed to me that they were overwhelmed by the dozen or so tracks simultaneously, but were able to monitor through twitter, meebo, and from blogs.

Wow, that is pretty neat. Social media, Twitter included, is playing a much more prominent role in the communication methods of the tech-savvy. It is enabling us with the tools we need to have a two-way dialogue with friends, loved-ones and even pure strangers who hold a common interest.

However, the social media concept still has a long way to go in obtaining mass participation, as there are so many people who have yet to catch on to this phenomonon. Why did Twitter emerge as a valuable communication tool at SXSW? Probably because the event brought together a group of the most technologically-advanced people in the nation. In other words, these people were not representative of the entire population; in fact, probably just a tiny percentage point.

To put this in perspective, I might consider my mom's involvement in social media. She works with disabled youth in the school district. She has a facebook profile, but rarely uses it (oh but trust me, she uses it much more than most moms I know. I guess I would consider my mom pretty 'hip' for a baby-boomer). She uses e-mail, and she even tested out IM for a while before giving up completely. But then I ask myself why. Why is the rest of the world so behind the times in this growing social trend? 

My mom probably doesn't use Facebook because none of her friends use facebook. She doesn't use IM because she doesn't know anyone else who does. She doesn't blog because she doesn't have anyone who will read it. She doesn't tweet because she simply doesn't see the point.

Social communities via social media is where we are headed, however if our society does evolve to embrace this trend we must evolve together.  Yes, there is a select group of people focused on bringing social media to life, but for the rest of us, social media is still largely focused on the me.